What's in the dataset
Employment class action settlements approved by Washington and Oregon courts: currently King County Superior Court, both Washington federal districts (W.D. Wash. and E.D. Wash.), and the District of Oregon, with additional counties in both states in progress. Coverage runs from 2017 to the present. "Employment" means wage-and-hour and pay-transparency/equal-pay class claims; consumer, privacy, and other non-employment class actions are excluded even when the class members happen to be employees.
Sources
Court records: motions for preliminary and final approval, approval orders, and fee orders, collected from court files and PACER/RECAP. Every financial figure is traced to a specific document; nothing is estimated or extrapolated.
Definitions
- Fee %: the fee award actually approved by the court, as a percentage of the gross settlement fund (not the requested fee, and not net of costs).
- Days to final: calendar days from entry of the preliminary approval order to entry of the final approval order.
- Modified: the court made a substantive change to the requested terms (fees, service awards, notice plan, allocation). Ministerial edits don't count.
- Service award: the court-approved payment per named plaintiff / class representative.
- Class size: the number of class members stated in the approval papers.
- Gross fund per class member: the gross settlement fund divided by class size. This is before fees, costs, and service awards come out; the checks class members actually receive are smaller.
Why judges are anonymized here
The judge-level rows use consistent letters rather than names. The underlying orders are public record, but a ranked public table invites lazy readings of small samples. The named analysis, with the case-level context that makes it fair, is available in conversation. Get in touch.
Caveats
- Medians throughout. Subset sizes (n) are shown wherever a figure could mislead without one.
- Some rows await final orders; their financial fields are excluded until approval is entered.
- This is a growing dataset under active verification. Figures may shift from time to time.
About
Compiled and maintained by Rob Gillette, mediator and employment attorney, Gillette Mediation. Questions, corrections, or a case I've missed: contact me.